Switcharoo
by ohlookrandom
Summary: When Justin makes the assumption that at the heart of it, Windsors are exactly like Hanovers, Charlie doesn't have the heart to correct him of this very, VERY incorrect assumption. Based off CP Coulter's "Dalton"!


I apologize for not putting anything up sooner. I'm currently swamped with work and college applications, but I promise you that I am not dead, friends! At least... not completely dead, anyway.

This is a short little thing I whipped up after reading a fantastic fanfic called "Dalton" by the magnificent CP Coulter. If you're fans of the Warblers on Glee, you should totally give the story a shot. She's so good you will weep. At least, I wept.

Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, except Scott. As for the rest of them, they either belong to CP or Ryan Murphy.

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><p><em>9 a.m. Saturday<em>

"Already?" Justin Bancroft's smirk spread from ear to ear as he sat down on the seat.

An indecipherable grumble came from Charlie Amos as the Windsor prefect clutched an ice bag against his purple, swollen eye. Justin simply continued to grin as he idly twirled his phone in his hands, guessing that whatever Charlie had just muttered ran along the lines of "Those _stupid _Tweedles…"

"What did they do this time?" Justin asked, watching amusedly as Charlie shifted the ice pack.

"Shoot me in the face with those stupid Nerf guns while I was trying to read _Hamlet_." Charlie removed the ice from his eye, wincing as the cold numbness wore off. "I knew I should have banned those stupid guns from the house when I got the chance. How bad does it look?"

"Pretty bad," Justin supplied rather unhelpfully. "It looks like you ran into the lamppost."

Charlie swore and put the ice pack back on his eye. "How lovely."

"It's only been the first day back, Charlie," Justin pointed out, having the audacity to smirk even wider when Charlie shot him a death glare. "Surely you can control Windsor."

"Who are you and what have you done with the real Justin?" Charlie muttered. "Before this, you would be sympathizing with me for having inherited the whole lot of crazies."

"I'm sure they're not that-"

"They shot me. With _Nerf guns. _IN THE FACE. While I was reading!"

"You could have been in the library," Justin suggested.

"Not even then, Dwight jammed all the locks closed because he swore up and down that the house had a poltergeist and he needed to exorcise it." Charlie closed both his eyes. "Why can't I just live in a peaceful house like Hanover?"

Justin snorted. "Hanover is a little too peaceful sometimes."

"Have _you _walked into Windsor lately? You'd be _begging _for peace." Charlie scowled.

"You just need to be firm with them," Justin offered a little too cheerily. "Once you've set down groundwork for the rules, you can proceed from there!"

"I have an entire _rulebook_, Justin. I think that hasn't worked." Charlie sighed, mentally calculating how many months he had left with the entire house of nutjobs.

"Rulebook?" Justin asked, momentarily taken aback.

"I _had _a rulebook," Charlie corrected himself. "Until Reed accidentally dropped it into the fireplace and then stuck his left hand in by accident." He eyed Justin rather warily. "You talk as though you know exactly how to keep Windsors under control."

Justin shrugged. "At the base of it, they're quite similar to the bunch of Hanovers, aren't they?"

Charlie opened his mouth to correct his friend of this wrong- _very, _very, very wrong- assumption, but then shut it when an idea struck him. "Rules, you say?" he asked.

"Sure. Once you lay the barriers down, generally the boys tend to follow." Justin looked at his phone as it vibrated with a text message, thus totally missing the grin spreading across Charlie's face at the devious plan that had just struck him.

"Why don't we try it?" Charlie's too-innocent tone was completely lost on the Hanover prefect when he slid his phone open to text his sister back. "Switching houses, I mean. You'll take Windsor for a week, and I'll take over Hanover for a week."

"Howard will find out, and then you'll be screwed," Justin said absent-mindedly, continuing to text.

"He doesn't come down to Windsor unless there's a parent who wants to see their kid. Otherwise, he leaves us alone." Charlie reached over and punched Justin in the shoulder. "Go for it, Bancroft. I need to learn something from you, and Windsor needs rules."

Justin sighed as he hit "send". "I suppose it couldn't hurt."

"Great," Charlie said happily. "I'll send David a text, tell him that you're on the way. No time like the present!"

"Wait, what?"

…

_12 p.m. Saturday_

The first inkling of the disaster that lay ahead came, unsurprisingly enough, from Dwight. The self-professed spiritualist met Justin at the door, suspicious eyes scanning the tall prefect from head to toe. "Let me see your fingers," he ordered.

Justin wrinkled his brow. "Why?"

"_Don't _ask why!" Wes bellowed from wherever he was inside the house, but it was too late- Dwight was already narrowing his eyes at Justin and reaching for the holy water sprayer at his waist.

"Dwight- Dwight, man, put the sprayer down," David panted from wherever he had appeared from- most likely the kitchen, Justin guessed as David's jacket looked like it was coated in quite a large amount of flour. The Windsor boy caught Dwight's arm as the pale spiritualist made to squirt several sprays in Justin's direction. "I assure you, Dwight, Justin's clean."

"But I-"

"He's _fine_," Wes said sharply, materializing next to his best friend. "But I could have sworn that Blaine's clock vibrated, Dwight, you might want to check that out."

"It's that poltergeist again! Drat, I thought I had finally exorcised the last of his spawn-" And here Dwight shot up the stairs in a blue blur, leaving Wes and David with an extremely confused Justin.

The twins chose that precise moment to step out from where they had been observing the entire time. "Good day, White Queen-" one of them- Evan, Justin guessed- greeted cheerily. "What brings you here to our quaint little world of Wonderland?"

"People don't generally come here by choice."

"Unless we persuade them-"

"-doesn't really make it _their _choice then, does it?"

Justin lifted his left shoulder. "Charlie and I are switching houses for a week." He noticed David's shoulders shaking slightly with suppressed laughter, and Wes biting the inside of his cheek. The twins, however, kept their best poker face on. "What?" Justin wanted to know.

"Nothing," the other twin said happily.

"Absolutely nothing," his identical image agreed.

"Where will you be staying, White Queen?"

"In Charlie's room, I expect-"

"-Quite a nice choice- quite fairly decorated, I do think-"

"-with leather couches and Egyptian cotton."

"We'll take you there," both of them said in a rush, swooping on the bewildered Hanover prefect and pulling him into the madness that was Windsor. As they whisked Justin up the two flights of stairs, Wes turned to David. "How long do you reckon he's going to last?"

David shrugged. "Just about a week, maybe."

"I say he sticks it out for two or three days," Wes grinned.

"You're on." David fist-bumped Wes.

…

_8.47 a.m. Sunday_

The first day Justin was at Windsor, things went quite swimmingly. The only thing that he saw out of place was how unnervingly accurate the Twins were in predicting where he was going to be. If he decided to stroll into the kitchen, the Twins were sitting there cheerfully waving at him. If he headed into the library, they were grinning with the same identical grins by the fireplace, stacks of his books sitting next to them. Otherwise, Justin found most of Windsor fairly harmless- they stayed out of his way and didn't bother him.

Charlie, Justin decided, was overreacting.

Blaine was no help either with cluing Justin into the huge mystery. Every time he saw Justin, his mouth twitched with amusement, but otherwise he was fairly civil. Reed was the most endearing of the whole lot, tripping over his feet five times trying to shake Justin's hand. Justin was still rather unclear of how Reed had managed to survive without ever breaking a major limb.

So at approximately 8.45 a.m. on a Sunday morning, Justin absently stood in front of the cracked Windsor windows, idly observing the hairline fractures that spread like spiderwebs alongside the frame and the base of the window. From inside Windsor, everything outside seemed rather peaceful. There was a Hanover, scurrying along with his books balanced in one arms; Justin winced when the Hanover, blocked by a rather large-looking geography textbook, tripped over what looked like a wire tied to two trees. "Tweedles…" he said to the room aloud.

"Actually, that was Dwight," a voice corrected, and Justin yelled in shock as the voice interrupted his peaceful serenity.

"Whoa, there," the voice said, clearly bored out of its wits. "Calm down, O Jumpy One. It's just Han."

"Where are you?" Justin asked in bewilderment, glancing around the room.

"In the Sanctuary of Life. And if I'm lucky, you'll never see me." Han cleared his throat. "Well, Justin, it appears as though you've woken up the whole first floor with that little unimpressive display of screaming."

Justin scowled- although at who, he wasn't quite sure- and muttered, "Well, it's 8.45, they should have been up 45 minutes ago anyway."

"Wrong," Han drawled. "Windsor doesn't usually get up till 9.30, _especially _not on Sunday. You're going to have a very grumpy group of boys on your hands."

"Then why are you up?"

"I don't sleep." Han snorted. "I have my arm hooked up to an IV drip of coffee, so I never experience this mortal desire to slumber."

Justin couldn't tell if this mysterious voice was serious or not (he had honestly thought that all the coffee addicts were in Stuart), but at that moment there was an almighty crash and a high-pitched yelp. Justin sighed- he recognized that yelp- and strode out into the hallway. "Reed?" he called.

"Y-yes?" The small boy scrambled up from where he was, adjusting his sleeves and brushing off dust from his pajamas. He reached for the banister, but tripped over his untied shoelace and almost crashed into the banister. "I'm fine!" he stammered when Justin made to reach over and help him up.

"Fire in the-" he heard someone bellow from upstairs, and then Justin tumbled to the floor when an explosion rocked the entire house.

Wes passed by just then, a thermos in his hand. "Good morning, Justin," he greeted the Hanover prefect affably, as though an explosion hadn't just blasted through the upper floors. "I'm going out for a bit, Tabitha wants to meet me for a date." He reached over and nonchalantly pulled the fire extinguisher off the wall as a goggle-headed boy strolled down the stairs. "Here you go."

Justin gaped at Wes as Goggle Boy took the fire extinguisher and scampered back upstairs without so much of a word. "Going out?" he echoed. "Did you not just hear what happened?"

The Asian boy blinked at Justin. "No. What happened?"

David came in just then, wincing as he tried to bite into a charred cookie. "I think I left these in too long again. Do you think Katherine will still like them?"

Justin attempted to find words to explain his predicament. "But there was an explosion," he tried to explain. "You just handed a fire extinguisher to- why are you eating a burned cookie?"

David looked at the offending cookie. "Well, it's still a cookie," he offered. "I thought that I could speed up the cooking time if I turned the temperature up."

The Hanover prefect decided not to try questioning that logic and instead turned to Wes. "You're not going anywhere," he declared.

Wes raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Why not?"

Justin blinked, taken aback by this sudden show of insubordination- heaven knew that Hanovers _never _questioned an order. "Because- Wes, did you seriously not hear that explosion?"

"_That's _why you're barring me?" Wes demanded. "That happens every day."

Justin just stared at him, lost for words.

There was a sudden howl from upstairs, and Justin jumped out of his skin. "Now what-" he demanded.

"TWEEDLES!" Blaine's unmistakable voice roared from the vicinity of the upper floor, and the next thing Justin knew, the twins were skidding down the banisters, still clad in their matching bunny pajamas and cackling madly. "GET BACK HERE YOU TWO-"

"Goose feathers?" David asked knowingly.

"Only the best, March Hare-"

"-complete with melted caramel and glue-"

"-The Rabbit certainly had sweet dreams last night."

"Are we done?" Wes was asking impatiently. "Tabitha's waiting, and she hates it when I'm late."

"I KNEW IT," Dwight bellowed from upstairs. "I knew your room was possessed by the box ghost!"

"No, Dwight," Blaine's exasperated tone yelled back, punctuated by a crash: "My room is not inhabited by a ghost, nor is it a place for haunted bird spirits!"

"You mock my trade?"

"NO DWIGHT I MOCK YOU."

"You know," Evan said thoughtfully, "maybe we should have added starch to the mixture. Caramel was a little too watery…"

"But then you wouldn't have had the mixture soak through the fabric," David said knowingly.

"This is true-" Ethan grinned.

"-couldn't have said it better myself, Hare."

"_What _is going on?" Justin finally erupted when he had sufficiently recovered enough of his wits. "ALL OF YOU, SIT DOWN."

This had no effect on the small group at the bottom of the stairs, as they just stared at Justin. "Whoa," David said at last. "Chill, Bancroft."

"Chill- you want me to chill?" Justin gestured upstairs. "An explosion just _ripped through _the house- and I have someone who wants to meet his girlfriend off campus AGAINST SCHOOL REGULATIONS, I have arsonists upstairs, a crazy spiritualist, a spy in the walls and-" He gestured at the Twins. "-that!"

"I take offense at the spy in the walls part," Han's voice crackled through the speakers.

Ethan- or Evan?- put a hand over his heart. "We're offended, White Queen."

"We expected something along the lines of rascals-"

"-maybe even idiots-"

"-Dwight's quite fond of calling us demons-"

"It's not against school regulations," Wes said defensively. "It's a weekend, and I'm allowed to go out."

"You're _all_ on house arrest," Justin reminded him, glaring at the offending boy.

"We are?" Reed piped up.

"Yeah. Remember? Howard didn't take kindly to us pouring hot sauce into Larson's cereal…" David grinned. "Though that was worth it."

The Twins chortled loudly at that one. "Remember his face when he took a bite?"

Justin wanted to ask how on earth they had managed to get into Stuart House unnoticed, but decided that he might just explode if he tried to understand the mechanisms of the Twins' minds. "Well-"

"Fire in the-" he heard someone yell from upstairs again, and Justin immediately threw himself down onto the floor, covering his ears. When he was fairly sure that the three booms had passed, he opened his eyes to see the small group of boys peering at him in curiosity. "Justin, are you quite sure you're okay?" Reed asked.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS ENTIRE HOUSE?" Justin exploded.

Wes took a sip out of his thermos. "Ah, the memories of Charlie yelling that his first month here."

…

_2.30 p.m. Sunday_

Speaking of Charlie, the Windsor prefect was quite enjoying his stint at Hanover. He turned the page of _Hamlet, _enjoying the peace that assaulted his ears.

"Charlie," a small Hanover said, shyly peeping around the door, "is everything okay? Do you need me to get you a new bag of ice?"

"No, Scott, but thank you," Charlie smiled. Scott didn't even smile back, only scurried away like a terrified little puppy. Charlie frowned; he didn't think he was _that _scary. What on earth had Justin done to these poor boys?

A faint boom sounded in the distance, and Charlie looked up to see Windsor in the distance. He squinted- yes, that was indeed Drew and Satoru's window that was smoking. _All normal in Windsor, then. _He half-rose from his chair, tempted to go over there and see what was wrong, but then sat back down. "Ah, Justin's got it," he muttered to the room at large. "Right, Han?"

It took him a minute to remember that he wasn't in Windsor anymore, and thus, Han could no longer supply him with conversation through the walls. _Pity. _Charlie shrugged, and settled into his armchair to continue reading.

Danny Abbot strolled in just then, headphones on as usual. "Hi, Charlie," he greeted the Windsor prefect affably. "How goes it? The eye feeling okay?"

"Better, thank you." Charlie touched the eye gingerly. "Still rather sore, but what can you do with Nerf guns?"

Danny simply grinned and strolled off. Charlie was taken aback by how disinterested the Hanover boy appeared to be, before remembering that Justin told him how Danny had bought noise-canceling headphones on and thus probably couldn't hear anything Charlie had said. The Windsor prefect sighed, remembering the time that he had tried to invest in a pair before the Twins had stolen them away in the dead of night.

Speaking of noise canceling…. Charlie frowned when he listened to all around him. There was no noise. No sounds whatsoever. The hairs on his arm stood on end- they were planning something, he was sure. Silence was never a good thing. Tossing his book into the chair, he leaped to his feet, rushing to the door. "Don't do it, I'm on to you-" he yelled as he stormed through the doors-

-startling the entire house of Hanover, as they fairly jumped out of their skins from fright. Charlie found himself staring at about fifty boys, who all had various books and papers in their hand. "What are you doing?" Charlie finally asked.

"Studying…?" Spencer pointed out, as though it was such an obvious thing to see.

"Oh." Charlie winced. "Sorry."

Under the stares of the Hanovers, Charlie retreated back into the room he had just recently evacuated. "Merrill," he greeted the girl who stood at the door leading to the staircase. "How much of that did you hear?"

"Everything," Merrill answered with a grin. "Jumpy, aren't you?"

"Sorry. It's just that everything in Windsor is always chaotic…"

"Don't I know it." Merrill waltzed over to where Charlie was. "What are you reading?"

"_Hamlet_." Charlie held it up for her to see.

"A Shakespeare classic. I prefer _Othello_ myself, but _Hamlet_ is fairly interesting." Merrill settled into the other armchair. "Why are you here, Charlie?"

"What do you mean?" The Windsor prefect asked, looking up from his play.

She only gestured to the Windsor house in the distance, which appeared to be smoking still. "I didn't take Justin to be the suicidal type."

"Ah, he figured he could tame Windsor. I tried to tell him he couldn't, but…" Charlie shrugged.

Another boom rattled the windows, and both Merrill and Charlie glanced at Windsor again. In addition to the smoke, there appeared to be several figures out on the lawn chasing each other, but whether out of sport, terror, or desire to murder, Charlie wasn't quite sure. "I wonder if he's having fun," he commented.

Merrill sighed. "Knowing Justin, he's having a blast." She rose to her feet. "Well, I'm off to study."

"On a weekend?" Charlie asked, startled. He remembered vividly the years that the Twins and Wes and David had snatched his books out of his hands before dragging him off to another mad escapade.

Merrill only gave him a strange look as she backed out of the room. "What else would you do on a weekend?"

Charlie sighed as the door swung closed behind Merrill. "I miss Windsor," he muttered.

…

_5.30 p.m. Sunday_

"You got it?"

"I got it-" Wes winced as the football accidentally shattered a window. "I don't got it!"

Justin stormed through the door. "What did I say about throwing objects in the house?"

"You didn't," Han's voice crackled through the speakers. "You only said to not throw tennis balls at each other. Other than tennis balls, I assume that means everything else is fair game."

"Han, please shut up," Justin snapped, his British accent getting more and more pronounced with his rising temper. "I-"

Another blast rattled the house, and Justin felt slightly alarmed by the fact that he no longer jumped at these occurrences. "Where are they getting their chemicals? I confiscated all of them an hour ago and locked them away!"

"The Twins have a key to everywhere," David offered helpfully.

The two mischiefs materialized at that moment, smiling angelic smiles. "We didn't do it," they said brightly.

"Justin, you need to calm down," Wes told the Hanover prefect. "We know what we're doing. So does Charlie," he added as an afterthought. "Maybe you should get him back." He smirked at David, who only rolled his eyes as he thought about the ten dollars he'd owe Wes.

"Charlie-" Justin whipped out his phone and began composing a text. "That's it. I give up. You lot are-"

Just as he was about to hit send, the front door opened and Charlie stepped in. "Thought I'd come in to visit," he explained when Justin whirled around to stare at him. "After all, Hanover's studying."

"On a weekend?" David, Wes and the Twins asked at the same time.

"Right?" Charlie shook his head. "Your house is a little boring, Justin. Good kids, but boring."

"Does that-" Justin stopped. "Does that mean-"

"That I feel bad for you and think you should go back to Hanover where they clearly like you more? Yes." Charlie grinned. "It looks like you have your hands full, anyway."

Justin only sank into the armchair in relief. "_Thank you_," he sighed loudly.

"We weren't quite that bad," Wes protested.

"IF THERE ISN'T A BOX GHOST WHY IS YOUR ROOM FILLED WITH BOXES?" Dwight bellowed from upstairs. "DEMONS! DEMONS, I TELL YOU-"

Charlie glanced upstairs, and then to Justin's amazement casually looked back at the conspirators. "Is that Dwight's latest craze?"

"It might have something to do with the Twins continually putting boxes in Blaine's room when he's not in," David smirked.

"Relatively harmless, then?"

"No blood yet, although the Tweedles and I are betting on how long it takes before Blaine's patience snaps," Wes answered too happily.

"I don't get it," Justin said from where he was slumped in the armchair.

All the Windsors cast him a confused look. "What's there not to get?" Charlie asked.

"This." Justin gestured around the pandemonium- another blast rocked the upper floor, Dwight and Blaine were arguing something about sigils and paint and salt lines, there was an almighty crash that sounded like someone had fallen off their bed (read: Reed)- and Justin massaged his temple, ignoring the small flakes of paint that settled on his shoulder from the ceiling rocking from the blast. "I don't get how you deal with this."

"I don't understand how you deal with Hanover. They're all angelic little people. They study on the weekends, they ask me how I'm doing, they're…perfect. Like Stepford boys or something. It's kind of creepy, Justin." Charlie eyed his friend. "What did you do to them?"

"Don't mention Stepford anything to Dwight," Wes warned, "he'll probably run to the entire Hanover and attempt to find the demon that's possessing them all… or something."

Justin shrugged in response to Charlie's question. "I laid down the rules. You know, Hanover, "keepers of the peace" and all that." He eyed Wes, David and the Tweedles. "Which clearly doesn't exist very well in Windsor."

"'Windsor boys break the boundaries!'" the Tweedles chorused.

"And everything else within it," Charlie muttered ruefully. He crossed his arms. "Gotta admit we have our own charm, though."

"I do concede that point," Justin admitted. "Going back to Hanover may be a little boring now that I've been tainted by you crazy lot."

Charlie quirked an eyebrow and Justin only snorted. "Who am I kidding. Hanover will be _refreshing_ compared to this." He rose from his armchair. "Goodbye, you lot. See you in class?"

"Leaving already, White Queen?" Evan- or was it Ethan? Justin couldn't decide now, he was too exhausted- asked.

The other twin added with a Cheshire Cat-esque grin, "You barely stayed long enough to get to know us!"

"I know plenty," Justin deadpanned. "_Trust _me." He looked at Charlie. "You didn't let Scott get near the fridge, right?"

Charlie looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I wasn't supposed to let him do that?"

"What- ah no-" and Justin bolted out the door towards Hanover.

"Well, now that that's done-" one of the Twins started.

"- there remains one last thing to complete-"

"Tackle hug?" Wes offered.

"TACKLE HUG!" David yelled and Charlie only sighed as all four conspirators threw themselves onto him, knocking him to the floor.

_Yeah_, he admitted grudgingly to himself, _I guess I did sort of miss these idiots._

* * *

><p>So there you have it, my little attempt to be funny! Do review please, since you've taken all the time to read through this entire thing... Love y'all!<p> 


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